


Halo (In Reverse)

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Dialogue, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Neglect, F/M, M/M, Oblivious John, Oblivious Sam Winchester, Pre-Canon, Prostitution, Underage Prostitution, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-31
Updated: 2006-01-31
Packaged: 2018-02-14 13:03:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adulthood has a taste.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halo (In Reverse)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mona1347](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mona1347/gifts).



> Written for Mona1347's 2006 birthday. Gracious & amazing beta by Inlovewithnight, with my thanks.

Adulthood has a taste. It tastes like semen.

***

The first time was an accident.

Dad’s gone on one of his road trips. “You’re too young,” he tells Dean, despite all Dean’s protests to the contrary. “And someone needs to keep an eye on Sam.”

Dean wants to argue that Melba can look after Sam just fine, but it’s not the truth. Dad leaves them with Melba all the time, but it’s Dean who makes sure Sammy gets changed and bathed and fed. Melba mostly watches her soaps and drinks. Dad always comes back from his trips stubbled and beat up, looking like he hasn’t slept in days so Dean doesn’t say anything. He just buckles down and tries a little harder, because Dad needs him and so does Sammy.

Dad’s been gone for days, and there’s no food left, except for some highly suspicious take out and a couple sips of milk that aren’t going to do anyone much good. Melba says that there’s no money for more, so they’ll just have to deal. Sammy gets hungry, and Sammy starts to cry and Dean knows he’s got to do something. He’s the man of the house, when Dad’s gone.

He doesn’t know _what_ he’s going to do, though. He’s nine at this point, and his years of grift are still ahead of him. But already he knows not knowing is no excuse for not doing it.

So he puts Sam in the battered secondhand playpen with a sippie cup of the last of the milk—doesn’t smell _too_ bad yet—and he goes to figure it out.

***

_hey kid, you okay? you look like something’s wrong._

_no. nothing’s wrong. thanks._

_you’re so pretty, you know that? i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a boy pretty as you._

_um…_

_tell you what. c’mere. i’ll give you ten bucks, you let me suck your dick._

_no…_

_okay, wait! don’t go. twenty, i’ll pay you twenty._

***

He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t tell Melba. He doesn’t tell Dad.

He hides the money behind the wainscoting in his and Sam’s room in a little tin box and doles it out carefully in things like peanut-butter (which can be hidden and keeps forever) and milk (because Sammy is still growing, and he needs milk) and loaves of Mexican bread that cost a quarter.

It’s enough. It’s enough to last.

Dad comes back scratched up and exhausted, stinking of sweat and other, stranger things. He swoops up Sammy and holds him over his head, grinning as Sammy giggles. Then he looks at Dean and gives him a nod. “You take care of everything while I was gone, Dean?”

Dean nods, feeling a little thrill of pride that it’s true. “Yeah Dad, I sure did.”

***

Shortly thereafter, Dad finds out about Melba’s drinking. There’s a big, awful screaming fight and Dad puts a hole in the wall with his fist (which is just…wow. Cool.) and Melba packs up all her stuff in her suitcase with broken latches and leaves. Dean’s not sorry.

For a while, Dad stays closer to home, but Dean knows it won’t last.

In the morning, before it’s even light, Dad gets up and gets all the newspapers he can get his hands on. He sits hunched over breakfast with a felt tip pen and makes circles and notes, muttering to himself. He always sounds angry, although when Dean asks, he’ll smile and says he’s not.

Dean knows what it means.

Dad says that it’s necessary. That he’s going to catch the thing that took Dean’s mom away and make it burn. Something in Dean smolders in response when Dad says that, a tiny ember of satisfaction, a coal of revenge. “I need your help, son,” Dad says, putting his hand on Dean’s shoulder and looking at him seriously, like man to man. “You’re going to have to step up.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Dean says in reply, shocked that Dad even has to _ask_. “’Course I will.”

***

Sometimes, in the weeks after, Dean will dream about it. What happened. Not the guy so much as the feeling of it. Wet, sliding friction, slightly rough and _heat_ ; an ache that builds into hardness, hardness that builds into pleasure, pleasure that builds into… _oh_.

He wakes up a sticky mess and wonders how long before Dad leaves town again.

He wonders if the prospect makes him happy or not.

He doesn’t know.

***

The next time is on purpose.

It’s later; much later. _Years_ later.

After everything with Melba, Dad starts taking him and Sammy wherever he goes, packing them up in the car like extra pieces of luggage. It’s a happy time. And though Dean’s still the one that makes sure Sam’s burgers get cut up into bite size pieces and teaches him out to use a toilet like a big guy, Dad makes sure that they always get enough to eat and someplace to sleep.

Dad starts to show Dean stuff, in the down time. Tracking, weapons, defense and attack.

They’re a family. They’re a team.

And then Dad gets hurt.

***

_This time the guy doesn’t want to blow him, he wants to be sucked._

_He gives Dean sips from his bottle (peaches, it smells like peaches) and pets Dean’s head like he’s a puppy and says it’s okay, it’s okay, i won’t tell. just do it. come on. like that. yeah. fuck. oh fuck. yeah._

_After, Dean pukes it all back up, his throat raw and his mouth sore. The guy pets his head some more and tells him how good he was. really fucking good, he says. Dean washes it away with more of the guy’s cheap-o wine and then goes home._

_He’s light-headed and kind of high and he’s got fifty bucks in his pocket._

_He’s thirteen._

***

He comes home with food and tells Dad he stole it. Dad’s not happy, but things have been going that way for a while, and it’s a hell of a lot better than telling him what he _really_ did to get the money.

Dad accepts it, reluctantly. There’s not much else he can do, until he’s better. Well enough to get around without using Dean as a crutch. Well enough to work. They fall into a routine. Dean starts taking on more of the hunting, following Dad’s clues, Dad’s research. In the in-between, he tricks when he can, he steals when he can’t.

It goes fast, an eroding line of morality eclipsed by the need to keep Sammy fed and clothed. He learns with the same ferocity that he learns Dad’s different firearms or the correct Latin to exorcise imps.

 _It’s for Sammy,_ he thinks, the nights he comes back way too late and has to face himself in the mirror, scraped up, bruised and well fucked.

 _Normal is for other people,_ Dad says to Sammy one day, when Sammy’s bitching about having to learn bow-hunting. _Normal is an illusion._

It’s not until years later that Dean realizes Dad and he never had that talk. Dean just always knew.

***

_Fuck. Not enough lube. Not quite. It hurts. It drives him hard into the soft and crumbling brick. The fucked up thing is that he really doesn’t mind so much, fingers rough on his own cock as the guy thrusts hard and steady inside him. He’s so fucking hard and so fucking close…_

_fuck. yeah. take it. shit._

_The guy’s breath blurts on the back of Dean’s neck, hot and damp. When he comes, he bites down on Dean’s shoulder where the collar of his shirt parts ways from the skin, hard enough to leave the mark of his teeth. It’s the feeling of his teeth, grinding on the bone, as much as his cock that sends Dean hurtling, gasping and unhinged, over the edge._

***

“What the hell happened to you?”

Two moves in quick succession; one to throw the hand towel over the bruised and torn flesh of his shoulder and another to flick Sammy with the bath towel in his hand. “What’ve I told you about walking in on me in the bathroom?” he says, his voice hard and irritated.

“Yeah, but…” Sammy ignores the question, wide-eyed, “ _Jesus_ , Dean.”

“Watch your mouth, Sam,” Dad chides absently from the living room.

“Was it a werewolf?” Sam reaches for the towel, and Dean backpedals; slaps his hand away hard. “I bet it was a werewolf.”

“Yeah, it was a werewolf,” Dean agrees tiredly. “Mind your business, Sammy.” He makes a face and shoves Sam out, closing the door on him.

***

“You did good, Dean,” Dad says, and claps him on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

He doesn’t have to keep tricking. He makes jokes about Dad walking like John Wayne, but it’s a relief to have him up and around again. It makes Dean feel like everything’s going to be okay. Dad’s got a part-time gig working at one of the garages and Dean’s shown him the thing with the credit cards that he learned from one of his tricks. It’s not a lot of money—especially given the cost in ammo, rock salt, weapons and gas—but it’s enough. They get by.

He doesn’t _have_ to keep tricking.

But he does.

***

They stay almost seven months in Gardner, him, Sammy and Dad, looking for the Hellmouth. A tiny one, newly opened. Maybe it’s because of the Hellmouth, that Dean gets the shit beat out of him by one of his tricks. Usually, he’s careful about that sort of thing. At the end, he shows blade, scares the fucker off, but in any case, he can’t go home like this, because there’s no _way_ Dad’s going to believe he got messed up like this hunting.

He’s not seeing so good out of his right eye. Or either eye, if you really want to get down to it. He’s fumbling his way out of the alley and around the corner and he stumbles into her. For all he’s normally good on his feet, at this moment, they tangle and he thinks he’s going to fall, all the way to the ungiving concrete…until she catches him.

“Oh, _hey,_ ” she says, sounding a little startled but not nearly as startled as he thinks she should be for suddenly getting a double armful of fucked-up and bloody seventeen year old.

He tries to apologize, tries to get himself off her and back onto his feet, but it’s like drowning; he can’t quite figure out which way is up and the dark and the cold are creeping in.

And then it’s all gone.

***

_He wakes up trying to climb out from between her sheets. It’s daylight. She pushes him back down._

_“You’re hurt,” she says, like it’s easy._

_“I’m fine,” he argues, because he believes it’s true._

_This is how these things start._

***

Dad grabs him hard, both arms, and pulls him close. His forehead bone knocks against the rough bristle of Dean’s homemade stitches. “Dean, don’t you ever, _ever_ do that again!” Dad breathes.

“I’m sorry,” Dean answers, breathless. Sammy punches him in the arm—and damn, but the boy’s got the _boniest_ knuckles—and then goes in their room and slams the door.

“Your brother was worried too,” Dad says with an ironic half-smile as he hauls himself heavily from his knees onto the vinyl kitchen chair. It creaks rustily under his weight. “Come here.”

Obediently, Dean steps into the space between Dad’s knees. Dad grabs his chin lightly and angles his face into the light. “Not bad,” he says appraisingly. “I didn’t know we’d been here long enough for you to make any friends, Dean.”

Dean eyes him narrowly. He can’t always read Dad’s tone and there are more traps in there than in the Kentucky woods in hunting season. “Just some Good Samaritan, Dad,” he says blandly and shrugs. He’s good at that part.

Mostly he remembers how her long hair tickled his skin as she worked and the careful, light pressure of her fingers on his chin (just like Dad) as she wicked the needle through torn and broken skin and her voice.

 _”I’m Sufiya, by the way,”_ she said. She sounds like she’s laughing under the surface of her words. _”You got a name, or will Frankenstein do?”_

***

It’s a while before he goes out again.

It’s not because he’s scared (yeah, right), but because Dad and Sammy are keeping a closer eye on him. He and Dad don’t split up any more while hunting, and there’s more evenings kicking his heels in frustration back at the apartment keeping an eye on Sam.

 _I don’t need it,_ he thinks, forehead resting on the steamed over glass of the mirror. He feels lightheaded and weak-kneed, his chest too tight and his heart racing too hard. He’s afraid to leave the bathroom, afraid to even fucking _move_ , for fear he’ll just start _screaming_ , screaming his fucking head off and then what? _I don’t. It’s just because I have to. I have to.”_

And those are the right words. He feels the slithery race of his heart slow and ease, enough that he can breathe again.

 _Tomorrow,_ he thinks, and swipes a hand over his face. He’s beading sweat like he just went toe to toe with a demon.

Sam starts pounding on the door. “Dean! I gotta go!”

***

Things have been getting worse with the Hellmouth. Too many distractions, the sloppy and spreading nimbus of escaping evil. Too much collateral damage. They can’t afford to _not_ split up. Dad lets him go, with an admonition to stay alert and be careful. Dean promises, blithely and with a clear conscience.

He chases a hob through some back alleys and a pooka across an elementary school playground. Both are pretty weak, easily banished with iron and salt. A vamp almost gets the drop on him when he’s scarfing down a hasty dinner of crumbling ham sandwich in the park, but the crucifix around his neck lights up like a magnesium flare and gets the thing off him long enough for him to dig the stake out of his back pocket and dust the thing. He gets a handful of splinters for his trouble, a shallow love bite over his collarbone that hurts like a bitch, and his sandwich ground into the dirt. That was the last of the ham; it’s going to be peanut butter and crackers tomorrow.

“Fuck!” he shouts, a lot louder than he means to.

 _You know what to do,_ a voice in the back of his mind observes. _How to fix it. You don’t want Sam to go hungry, do you?_

No, he agrees wearily, wiping the blood off his neck absentmindedly and picking up the stake to be re-pocketed. Can’t have that.

***

_”Well don’t you look like a slice of half-dead? Well, come on up.”_

_He doesn’t mean to be here. He needs to be elsewhere, either earning a living for his family or saving someone else’s. But when she unlocks the little door next to the shop and goes, he’s right there behind her, feeling only a little more lucid than the first time._

_She feeds him; something from a crock-pot cooked down to the consistency of stew. She scoops four helpings into his bowl before he feels anything like human, sopping the gravy up with the bread she lays out alongside. She doesn’t ask him any questions. She doesn’t say_ anything _, just eats and watches him eat, drinking tea like it’s going out of style._

_When the bowl’s clean—and it doesn’t look that different from when it came out of the dishwasher—Dean just sits there looking at it. He knows he should go, but he just can’t make the circuits work._

_Finally, she sighs and stands. Holds out her hand. “Why don’t we get you cleaned up?”_

***

He…stops. He just _stops_.

She doesn’t ask him to. She doesn’t know. But she’s still having kittens about sleeping with someone nine years younger; no sense in adding to the problem.

Besides, he doesn’t want her to know. He doesn’t want _anyone_ to know. It’s not who he is, after all. It’s just something he does. For the family.

But it helps, quitting. He stops having the panic attacks. His focus returns, sharp and bright, and for the first time in months, his bruises actually have time to fade. She traces his scars with her fingers, but she never asks him about them. She never asks him anything.

Sometimes he wishes she would; it’s the only way he knows how to answer anything.

Even if it’s just a lie.

***

_He knows where she keeps her key; it’s barely after dawn, the apartment’s quiet._

_But she’s already up; he surprises her in the bathroom. She’s half dressed—skirt and bra—and when he calls her, she whips around. He sees the stick in her hand, white and long like a slightly bulbous tongue depressor. The smile falls off his face so fast he thinks it might have shattered on the tile and his stomach cramps_ hard _._

_“I’m late,” she says apologetically, and holds the test out, like a peace offering._

_Dean doesn’t breathe until the negative sign appears in the little window, and even after it does, he has to sit down, light-headed._

_Her smile is relieved. “Well, that’s good, right?” she says._

_But Dean already knows: he can’t risk this again._

__Best steer clear of women altogether, I guess, _he thinks._

***

But it’s like it’s been burned out of him; he can’t start up again and he can’t go back. There are other dangers than the things that go bump in the night.

Then Sammy figures out an algorithm to triangulate the Hellmouth and Dean figures out how to adapt the spell they know to actually close it.

“It’s only a _ritual_ sacrifice, Sammy,” he tells Sammy with a grin, while Dad marks out the lines of the circle in blood, chalk, salt and iron and Dean twirls the athame over and around the flat of his hand. “Hardly hurt at all.”

Sammy scowls and wriggles. The ochre paste probably itches. “Yeah, well I don’t see why _you_ couldn’t do it.”

Dean’s smile cracks at the edges even as Dad says, “Because your brother’s got a bit more…experience than you, Sam.”

Dean’s head whips around and he meets Dad’s tired and cynical gaze. Dad offers a half-grin and Dean’s heart beats again.

“Whatever.” Sam’s head falls back. He rolls his eyes and wriggles again.

***

It’s over. They leave. It’s a relief.

He gets better at pool in a hurry, because even if he can’t do _that_ , they still need money. He still has responsibilities.

And after a while, the tightness of his chest eases enough that he can stand to be touched again.

For Dad’s sake, and Sammy’s—because if there was _ever_ a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell family, it’s this one—he flirts with everything verifiably human and female. Dad is indulgent, other than a long and unnecessary discussion about the dangers of losing focus. Dean nods and makes all the right noises in all the right places. Sammy is mostly disgusted, although Dean’s noticed him checking out girls more than once, and he’s starting to take much longer “showers”.

“Fuck, Sammy; spank all you want, but at least leave some hot water for the rest of us!”

“Go to hell, Dean!” comes the reply.

Dad’s stopped trying to lecture them about language, engrossed in something on his laptop and a red pen clenched between his teeth. He’s muttering to himself, and Dean knows the signs. In a couple days, they’ll be on the road again.

“I’m going out,” he tells Dad and gets an absent hand wave in reply. _Maybe less than two days,_ he thinks, grimly satisfied.

He finds a club, one of the ones that really doesn’t give a shit how old you are, as long as you have the money to pay. He finds a boy, one chronologically about the same age, but years and miles younger in just about every way that counts. He lets the boy bend him over a rusted out Mustang that hasn’t left the parking lot in years and fuck him until his hands stop shaking and he stops thinking about anything at all.

***

Sometimes he looks at Dad, looks at Sam and thinks: _oh come **on** now; how do you not see it right under your faces like this?_

Sometimes he looks at them and he wonders: _what parts of you don’t I see? What are your secrets?_

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask. To ask is to put out an invitation to _be_ asked and there are certain questions Dean doesn’t want to _hear_ , let alone answer.

He’s going through Sam’s duffel, looking for his whetstone—which Sam just _will not_ stop appropriating, even though he’s got one of his own—when he finds the sheaf of college applications and financial aid papers and thinks, _well. There’s one._

After that night’s hunt—ghouls this time, a whole nest—Dean doesn’t even bother to go back to the hotel with Dad and Sam. He goes to a seedy little bathhouse, cleans up and flips three tricks in less than an hour.

He pukes it all up in the bathroom and his eyes burn as he looks at his bruised mouth and aching jaw in the greasy tin mirror. He grinds the ache away with the heels of his hands, then goes to do it again.

***

_It’s three am, which means it’s more like four where she is and he’s fucked up and fucked out and he doesn’t know why he’s calling her in the first place except that when he went into his pocket looking for the rest of his money to try and get drunk, he’d come up with the little scrap of diner place mat that has her number written on it._

_“You can call me any time, Dean. It doesn’t matter. I just want… If you’re in trouble, or you just want to say ‘hi’…call.”_

_He’s hanging on the line and it’s ringing and his nose is running with snot and who knows what else and suddenly he **can’t**. He just can’t._

_“Hello?”_

_He freezes, halfway to hanging up, and the silence spins out. He wants to say something, something important, but he doesn’t **do** that. Get into the habit of saying nothing long enough, and nothing’s all you **can** say._

_“Dean?”_

_His eyes close and he’s shaking again; vibrating, really, and he can’t stop._

_Her voice breaks. “ **Fuck**. Dean…is that you?”_

_He puts the receiver back into the cradle and goes back to the motel._

***

Sam leaves.

He and Dad start going their separate ways more and more often. Dad talks about tactics, and greater potential for help and research, but Dean’s been hearing what Dad _doesn’t_ say for years now and the man can hardly stand to fucking look at him.

Hell, Dean can hardly stand to look at himself.

Even though he doesn’t have to, he still finds himself flirting with the girls; a habit reassuring as the continued movement of air in and out of his lungs. Sometimes he’ll look at one of them and see _something_ , some fleeting flash of hair, or eyes, or body that makes him ache rottenly with something he can’t articulate even to himself.

He still sticks to fucking boys, though.

***

“Dad’s on a _hunting trip_ and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Fuck; he doesn’t want to be here. He’d rather be any fucking where than here. He’s got that taste on the back of his tongue; the salt/iron bitterness like some guy’s come down his throat—whether that’s actually true or not—and he’s vibrating like a damned jackhammer despite all his efforts to be still. But he’s got nowhere else to go. He built his life around Dad and Sam and maybe they’ve both left him, but he can’t leave _them_.

“Jess, excuse us, we have to go outside.”

 _Jess_. He knows that Sammy—and probably Jess for that matter—will take his staring for leering, but that’s not it. He’s come through Palo Alto lots of times, watching Sam from a distance but the problem with that kind of view is that it lacks context. He’s not sure what he feels. He wants to ask Sam what the hell it is he thinks he’s doing, that’s for sure.

 _Jess._ He wonders how much Sam remembers about Mom.

Then Sam starts talking, and Dean wonders if Sam remembers anything about any of them.

His anger starts to build like his headache and the pounding sense of _something’s wrong_ ; but it’s only a thin crust over depthless cold and endless darkness. Because if Sam won’t come, if he won’t help…

He’s never asked Sam for anything; it’s always been his job to provide, not take. He doesn’t want to beg. But he knows he will. If he has to.

_(please sammy don’t make me beg)_

***

“Dad let you go on a hunting trip on your own?” Sammy sounds amazed, almost…what? Envious?

“I’m twenty-six, dude.” He wants to spit. He wants to claw this taste out of the back of his throat. Instead he fumbles through the Impala’s trunk with unsteady fingers. Sam doesn’t notice. They bitch and wrangle and finally—unwillingly—Sammy agrees to come. Dean wants to be angry, but mostly he’s just grateful. Not alone. Not yet.

Sammy goes back into the apartment. Dean doesn’t think he can manage the stairs again; his legs feel just that rubbery, so it’s just as well Sam doesn’t invite him. Instead, he sinks down on the Impala’s seat, plants his elbows on his knees and tries not to puke. Monday. He’s got until Monday.

_Sammy’s coming. We’ll find Dad. And then it will be okay._

Except Dean can’t really remember the last time it was okay.

***

_”So, So how’d you pay for that stuff? You and dad still running credit card scams?”_

_Dean wonders what Sam would do if he said: “Actually, I fucked a frat boy and blew his two friends.”_

_(yeah, fuck. suck it. all the way, yeah. like that, don’t you? cock hungry little slut.)_

_“Yeah well…hunting ain’t exactly a pro-ball career. Besides, all we do is apply, it’s not our fault they send us the cards.”_

_(you’ve never known where your lunch money came from, have you, Sammy?)_

***

He’s forgotten how good Sammy is at the schmooze.

Dean’s too straightforward, honed by years of men with one thing on their mind and precious little patience or—concurrently—tracking and fighting things no one else believes in and being unable to talk about it.

But it’s more than that. He sees it in the diner when Sam’s making small talk with that girl Amy and her friend. Dean’s not bad with people. But it takes him time and effort. If you were to look at the four of them from a distance, you’d pick him as the outsider right away, whether from body language, accent, or clothes.

Sam, though…

Sam blends right in.

***

_“Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?”_

_(do you know? do you know the things i’ve done?)_

_“No and she’s not ever going to know.”_

_(of course not. we all have our secrets, don’t we?)_

_“Well that’s healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are.”_

_(who are you talking to, dean? your brother or yourself?)_

_“Who is that?”_

_“ One of us.”_

_(except he’s not, not really)_

_“No, I’m not like you. This is not going to be my life.”_

_(god, sammy; i hope not/hope so_ )

***

Sammy—Sam—goes into the house and Dean drives off. Alone. Again.

He makes it about half a block before the roadside tacos start coming back up on him. He jerks the Impala to the curb and stumbles out into the grass because there’s _no way_ he’s upchucking in the car. His arms quiver and he fights for the strength to not go face down in his own sick as his diaphragm twists and heaves.

When it’s over, he lifts his head, gasping in the cold Northern California air. From the corner of his eyes, he sees a hot gleam of gold. Twenty-two years and that color, that _gleam_ is still etched in every brain cell and nerve ending.

_Fire._

***

He wants to be sorry Jess is dead, and he _is_. He’s sorry and he’s angry and he’s hurt, because he’s not sure he ever really expected to see that _thing_ again. Wasn’t entirely sure that there ever really _was_ a thing, despite twenty-two years of evidence to the contrary.

But mostly he’s just sickly, dumbly grateful and how fucked up is that?

***

_”I don’t know, Dean; that credit card is almost maxed and we’re down to half a tank. I just don’t think we have the money for that.”_

_Dean’s thumbs tap out a rhythm on the wheel that has nothing to do with the Megadeth coming from the speakers. It’s a decent sized town and the bouncer at Salome’s should still remember him._

_“Let me worry about that, Sammy,” he says and turns on the full wattage of his **trust me** smile. “Don’t I always take care of you?”_


End file.
